Bonnie A. Osif

Successful Mentoring Programs: Examples from Within and Without the Academy

ABSTRACT There are numerous definitions of mentoring, but all emphasize a pairing of experienced professional with an employee needing guidance and advice in the workplace. Libraries are using mentoring to acclimate new hires, assist librarians through the promotion and tenure process, and to provide information to those interested in advancement to different positions in the organization. There is a wide range of mentoring programs and a review of successful programs, within libraries and in several other organizations, can provide guidance in developing or refining a library mentoring program.

Transportation information: a review of grey literature by format, language and availability

This article describes a research study that was replicated to confirm the research methodologies and search strategies of transportation engineers in their primary databases as the formats for access changed due to electronic releases in CD‐ROM and via the Internet. An empirical snapshot of the available transportation literature recognizing how much of it is described as grey literature is demonstrated by the retrieval of five search statements replicated in the TRIS and TRANSPORT databases. Recommendations include that libraries increase their participation in TAG and working with government agencies to encourage them to electronically publish their data for end‐user searching and that more continue to participate in cooperative collection development ventures.

International transportation literature: an analysis of citation patterns, availability and research implications to the transportation community

Attention to infrastructure issues has increased in recent years. The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA)and its reauthorization in the Transportation Efficiency Act of 1998 (TEA 21 ) have focused stronger attention on the need to encourage innovation, identify and facilitate partnerships, identify core research and provide assessment criteria. This has resulted in increased awareness that information is key to accomplishing these goals. The importance of international materials is now seen as critical to efficient utilization of knowledge. Reports a survey of 12 European transportation centers in nine countries during 1998. Information was gathered on local characteristics of researchers, areas of research specialization, formats and languages of resources used/borrowed by the researchers, local publications and their dissemination patterns, the utilization of US materials, and the role of the World Wide Web by the librarians, researchers and other staff at the transportation facility.

The three mile island unit 2 decontamination and recovery collection

Abstract The decade-long cleanup project at the Three Mile Island Unit 2 nuclear reactor was well documented by technical reports, videotapes, photographs, and slides. The Penn State University Libraries have acquired a large number of these materials from GPU Nuclear Corporation and have created a publicly accessible collection. The TMI Unit 2 Decontamination and Recovery collection consists of 3,400 videotapes, 6,000 photos and slides, and several hundred technical reports. The development of the collection and access to these materials are described in this paper.

The TMI-2 clean-up project collection and databases

A publicly accessible collection containing several thousand of the videotapes, photographs, slides and technical reports generated during the clean-up of the TMI-2 reactor has been established by the Pennsylvania State University Libraries. The collection is intended to serve as a technical resource for the nuclear industry as well as the interested public. Two Internet-searchable databases describing the videotapes and technical reports have been created. The development and use of these materials and databases are described in this paper.